The Genizah And Jewish Communal History

10.1163/ej.9789004190580.i-420.76

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Chapter Summary

This purpose to offer the status quaestionis on the problem of Jewish communal organisation in the late tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries in light of the Genizah's documentary corpus and to offer some comments on the Jewish community's shape, structure, and functioning. It intendes to take stock of the aggregate picture of Jewish communal life, particularly in light of Moshe Gil's collections of published Genizah documents on the Jews of Palestine and Iraq, and argues that the models have inherited from midtwentieth- century historians require some alteration in light of this new material. Scholarship on the documentary portion of the Genizah has always been a mirror of the broader concerns of Jewish historiography.